Low-frequency electronic noise in exfoliated quasi-1D TaSe3 van der Waals nanowires

We report results of investigation of the low-frequency electronic excess noise in quasi-1D nanowires of TaSe3 capped with quasi-2D h-BN layers. Semi-metallic TaSe3 is a quasi-1D van der Waals material with exceptionally high breakdown current density. It was found that TaSe3 nanowires have lower levels of the normalized noise spectral density, compared to carbon nanotubes and graphene. The temperature-dependent measurements revealed that the low-frequency electronic 1/f noise becomes the 1/f^2-type as temperature increases to about 400 K, suggesting the onset of electromigration (f is the frequency). Using the Dutta- Horn random fluctuation model of the electronic noise in metals we determined that the noise activation energy for quasi-1D TaSe3 nanowires is approximately E_P=1.0 eV. In the framework of the empirical noise model for metallic interconnects, the extracted activation energy, related to electromigration, is E_A=0.88 eV, consistent with that for Cu and Al interconnects. Our results shed light on the physical mechanism of low-frequency 1/f noise in quasi-1D van der Waals semi-metals and suggest that such material systems have potential for ultimately downscaled local interconnect applications.